“Cable organizers” is one of those useful product categories that no one can quite seem to get right. The engineering problem seems simple enough: Give me a way to neatly wrap up and stow my peripherals, like earbuds and power cables, ideally in a form that’s compact and not overly complicated to use.

Many have tried, but too often — whether due to improper sizing or an emphasis on form over function — cable organizers end up being less convenient than simply wrapping your headphones around a few fingers and stuffing them in your pocket.

If you’re a Mac user on the Internet, chances are you’ve come across a few websites where embedded content isn’t displayed correctly. Instead you get an icon or an error message saying Missing Plug-In, often with few additional details about exactly what is missing.

While there’s no single installer which will solve all missing plug-in problems, there are a few common things to start with. If those don’t work you can delve deeper into non-common formats or the forgotten codecs of yesteryear.

FileBrowser, the – uh – file browser app for iOS, has gotten a slew of new features in a recent update, one of which will make movie-downloading iPad owners very happy: Now the app can not only browse network-attached drives (like the Time Capsule), it can stream movies of any format to other apps on your iPad.

CineXPlayer, the excellent, rock-solid, play-anything video player for iOS, had gotten yet another big update. Every time the app is bumped to a new version, I wonder what the developers will be able to add next time. And today’s answer is… Quite a lot.

OPlayer, from olimsoft, is an iOS application for both iPhone/iPod Touch and iPad, that claims to boost your device’s media capabilities by allowing playback of a huge list of audio and video file formats.

The list of supported formats is pretty impressive, and will save you a great deal of effort if you often find yourself having to convert movies to watch on your device while you’re on the move. A fairly big video file can take a while to convert and it’s not the most exciting of tasks. But with OPlayer conversion isn’t needed – simply transfer your media to your device.

You can transfer files to your device using the File Sharing feature within iTunes or you can download them using the built-in browser from your computer, from the internet or from an FTP server. It’s also possible to stream media to your device over Wi-Fi and 3G.

The release of OPlayer, and of CineXPlayer last week, in to the App Store certainly suggests that Apple is relaxing some of its restrictions on app approvals, most likely in a bid to discourage users from jailbreaking their devices. Will this open the doors for other third-party media players?

Get OPlayer for your iPhone & iPod Touch from the App Store here, or get the HD version for your iPad here.